Definition
An obsolete English legal term referring to the official checking or auditing of another officer's financial account, and specifically to the keeping of a counterroll — a duplicate or parallel record maintained as an independent check against a primary roll of accounts. The officer who performed this function kept a running record alongside the primary accountant, allowing the Crown to verify that receipts and disbursements were accurately recorded.
The term appears in the context of royal finance and the administrative machinery of medieval and early modern English government. The counterroll was a physical document: a second scroll or register kept by a separate officer to cross-check entries against the primary roll held by the accountant. Controlment was the practice and the authority to perform that checking function.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Control.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The power or act of controlling; the state of being restrained; control; restraint; regulation; superintendence." Webster's also records an obsolete adversarial sense: "Opposition; resistance; hostility," citing Shakespeare — "Controlment for controlment."
The gap between common and legal meaning is real but straightforward: in ordinary early modern English, controlment meant control or restraint in a general sense, with a secondary obsolete meaning of active opposition. The legal term of art is narrower and more specific — it refers to a defined auditing function within the Crown's fiscal administration, not merely oversight in the abstract. A researcher encountering the word in a historical legal document should not assume the broader common meaning applies.
Common Confusion
Controlment is sometimes confused with its functional descendant, the office of Controller (or Comptroller). The Controller was the officer; controlment was the function or authority he exercised. Burrill's notes the synonym contra-rollment, which more transparently reveals the counterroll etymology. Researchers should also distinguish controlment from general supervisory authority — the term is specifically fiscal and documentary, tied to the counterroll mechanism, not a synonym for administrative oversight broadly.
Why It Matters in Research
Controlment is a term of purely historical and archival significance. It will not appear in modern statutes, regulations, or case law. Researchers are most likely to encounter it in:
— Transcriptions or analyses of medieval and early modern English fiscal records, exchequer documents, and Crown administrative statutes.
— Historical legal dictionaries and treatises explaining the structure of royal household and exchequer offices.
— Statutory text, as in the example Burrill's preserves from 5 Edw. VI. c. 16, referencing "the receit, controlment or paiment of the king's money."
The primary research trap is anachronism: importing a modern sense of "control" or "oversight" into a context where the word has a precise technical meaning tied to the counterroll system. A secondary trap is treating controlment and controllership as interchangeable — the former is the act and the authority, the latter is the office.
Because all three source dictionaries give nearly identical definitions with no evolution across editions, this term was already archaic when Black's first compiled it. It appears in these dictionaries as a reference term for readers encountering it in historical sources, not as a living legal concept.
No meaningful jurisdictional variation exists — this is a term specific to English Crown administration and has no independent American legal history.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement on the core definition: checking another officer's account and keeping a counterroll. The three entries differ only in that Burrill's adds the most useful content: the statutory citation from 5 Edw. VI. c. 16, the synonym contra-rollment, and a cross-reference to the entry for Controller. Black's in both editions reproduces the base definition without the statutory illustration.
The Burrill's entry is the most useful of the three for research purposes precisely because of the statutory quotation, which anchors the term in a real legislative document and demonstrates its use in context. The statutory phrase "receit, controlment or paiment of the king's money" shows the term functioning as one element in a triad of fiscal operations — receipt, auditing, and payment — each a distinct administrative act.
No historical legal dictionary goes further than this. The absence of case law citations across all three sources is consistent with a term that was a descriptor of administrative practice rather than a legal concept generating litigation.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses the English counterroll system or exchequer office structure. The matched entries — on secured transactions perfection, the Controlled Substances Act, and OFAC export controls — share only superficial linguistic overlap with this term and are not relevant to its historical legal meaning.